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I just got a dedicated server with Ubuntu 12.04 installed with a custom compiled kernel. Since I would like to install VirtualBox and this custom kernel doesn't support dynamic module loading (for security) I need to change the kernel.

I'm running some Ubuntu servers for years but never played with grub and a headless computer.

When the command update-grub is run it shows the different kernel it finds. Here is what I see 

Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/bzImage-3.2.13-xxxx-grs-ipv6-64
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-34-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-34-generic
  No volume groups found
done

The first one is the active one as seen with uname -r. To me it looks like the second kernel is the one I should use. But I don't know how to configure grub2 to use it.

The computer is also configured with a software RAID using mdadm I guess. Never used that before. I don't know if playing with the grub of changing kernel could brake this.

What must I do to set the generic kernel as the default one so that I can get VirtualBox running.

Eric Carvalho
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chmike
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1 Answers1

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To change the default menu entry from a terminal:

  1. Obtain the existing menuentry choice number (starting from 0) run the following from the terminal: grep menuentry /boot/grub/grub.cfg
  2. Now open /etc/default/grub as root then update GRUB_DEFAULT to the corresponding menuentry number.
  3. Run sudo update-grub
  4. Reboot !
Georg Friedrich
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martin-mystere
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  • Perfect. It rebooted and uname -r returns 3.2.0-34-generic. Thank you very much. – chmike Dec 06 '12 at 13:43
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    This does not work for me since the first page in the boot menu consists of: Ubuntu, Advanced Options (where all my kernel versions are), Mem test, Mem test. So if I change to default of 2 then the Mem test runs instead of the kernel I want from the Advanced menu. – Chef Pharaoh Jul 02 '15 at 14:28
  • @ChefPharaoh You can access submenus using a syntax like GRUB_DEFAULT="1>2" For more info https://superuser.com/questions/1358080/what-does-grub-default-12-mean – TimSC Jan 17 '23 at 22:28